Autonomy is at the heart of a new data revolution

James Ashton

Sunday February 01 2009, 12.00am, The Sunday Times

James Ashton

Sunday February 01 2009, 12.00am, The Sunday Times

SARCASM is not Mike Lynch’s strong point. The founder of data-sorting company Autonomy has pioneered software that can sift e-mails in place of humans and has profited hugely as a result. But despite harnessing the power of pattern-matching algorithms to pull meaning from a jumble of information, the only human characteristic he can’t train a computer to understand is sarcasm, a very British trait.

“Not ‘your product is good . . . not’  that’s quite easy,” Lynch said. “There’s a certain percentage of data where it’s just not worth getting a machine to do it.”

It is a tiny chink in the armour of Cambridge-based Autonomy, a survivor of the first dotcom boom and bust that has undergone an impressive renaissance.